Interview: Director Mike P. Nelson On Relationships After the Apocalypse in THE DOMESTICS
Michelle Swope
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Kate Bosworth, Tyler Hoechlin, and Lance Reddick battle barbaric gangs after a catastrophic event in The Domestics from Writer/director Mike P. Nelson. Bosworth and Hoechlin play an estranged husband and wife trying to figure out who they can trust when they’re among the straggling survivors in a post-apocalyptic wasteland overrun by roving gangs intent on slaughtering them for sport. The film is a horrifying and gritty story about survival, but also a unique character study of a broken relationship that’s put to the ultimate test. Dread Central recently had the chance to speak with Director Mike P. Nelson about the end of the world, inspiration for the different gangs portrayed in the film, relationships, and more.
The Domestics will be in select theaters June 28th and on demand June 29th from Orion Classics. You can follow The Domestics on Facebook and Orion Pictures on Twitter for more information.
Dread Central: Hi, Mike! Thank you so much for taking the time to talk with me today. How are you?
Mike P. Nelson: I’m good! This is crazy to be talking with Dread Central, because Dread Central was kind of my entrance into the horror community with an anthology film I was the director on back in 2006, called Summer School. They did a piece on it, so this is really cool to come full circle and talk with Dread Central.
DC: What made The Domestics so scary for me is that it has a post-apocalyptic setting that really isn’t all that hard to imagine being a reality. Did the current political/social climate inspire the story at all?
MN: Yeah, I think it definitely did. At the time I was writing it, we were still on the outs with Obama and I don’t think Trump was even a whisper yet. For me, at the time it was more that I wanted to tell this relationship story as a post-apocalyptic drama and put some action and horror in it. So, I was thinking to myself, “how can I give this some weight and put this now?” Well, it kind of delivered itself when things started changing in the country. We went into a very different time and I remember talking with the producers and saying, “I think this is some stuff that could really help us shape this world and make it more believable.” So, I think we just sort of ran with it, nothing super specific, but it was more that everybody was in the mindset because the election happened during the movie. That happened right there and we were all in that headspace, so we wanted to know what we could do to challenge this idea. I think a lot of that came with the idea of, at the beginning, the exposition about the crop dusting or the chemtrails or the planes, and that it was our own government that did it to us because they were sick of our insubordination. Basically, that they just wanted to start over again and it was sort of a strange, dark fantasy of what could come if we were all so against of the leader of the free world, if you will.
DC: There are several gangs in the film, the Nailers, Plow boys, Gamblers, Sheets and Cherries. The way they dress and act reminded me of films like The Warriors and Mad Max. How did you come up with the idea for the different gangs and were you influenced by other films or writers?
MN: I’ll be honest with you. The 1979 Mad Max has always been an inspiration for the work that I do. I think there’s something really unique about that movie in particular because the movie feels very normal. The road feels normal. Something feels off, but people still eat in restaurants, people still drive in cars on the right side of the road, but the problem is that the people have gone bad. That’s really what I wanted to capture is that it’s the people in this world that make it terrifying. The desolation sort of makes it eerie, but I think it’s the people and their kind of evil intentions after everything that’s gone on, that almost sort of make it claustrophobic in a way because you don’t know who’s lurking around the corner. Even if there’s only 5% of people left in this country after what happened, there’s enough people to be scared about if there’s somebody behind that thing over there. I don’t know, but you have to be very careful. That brings in a lot of terror, I think, about what this world is. So, with the gangs, for me it was so back to The Warriors, it was stuff that I love. I love ghosts that just wear bed sheets, and that was literally my thought behind the Sheets gang. I just wanted to make a gang that looks like ghosts and so I dressed them up in tactical gear, put some assault rifles in their hands, and made them look like ghosts. Those are so fucking creepy to me.
The Plow boys, some of it’s just the weird shit that’s in my brain. I love car mechanic, greaser kind of stuff and I grew up around hot rods and cars. So I wanted to make a gang that was really focused on that kind of stuff. Then for the Gamblers, I was obsessed with taxidermy and animal heads. In all the post-apocalyptic movies you see people taking money and they burn it in the fire to keep warm because money has no value and I wanted to do something different with that. I wanted to make it where a gang actually still had money and they worshipped it like a God, and they play these games of chance. The idea being, I didn’t get too much into it in the movie, but there’s this idea that they were more of like the lower income, poor people who can now have all the money in the world and this is what they worship and this is what they do and it sort of went bad. Then of course there are the Cherries, which are great; an all-female gang that has its root in feminism. They hunt men because men are the things that have been basically hunting them up until this.
Director Mike P. Nelson on the right
DC: This movie is really brutal, but I think what I find most interesting is that it focuses a lot on the relationship between Nina and Mark as well as their self-discovery of who they are as individuals. Why did you decide to incorporate those things into the story?
MN: Honestly to me the relationship story is the movie. I wanted to make a fun, scary, exciting movie, but when the idea for the movie came about it was literally about how marriage is hard. I had been married for three years at the time I started writing it and I thought, “This is really tough. I’ve got to write about how challenging this is, but I don’t want to make a movie that’s just a drama.” I wanted to do something violent and action packed and brutal and bloody, and then put this in it. I want to make the movie about that and then surround it with all this cool, crazy stuff. It was super important and the reason that it is there as frontal as it is, is because that’s what I think drives the movie and makes us care about what the hell is going on. I think those are the things that make what Nina does later on so much more potent. She’s so fragile, she’s so scared of this world and what she realizes through the love she actually still has for husband, is that she is willing to do everything, even kill. That’s a pretty strong thing, especially coming from somebody who really has no connection to her husband at the beginning of the movie. Those elements all have to work in conjunction.
DC: I think it’s really cool that they are both totally different people by the end.
MN: Yeah, she’s outside killing the bad guys and Mark is inside trying to protect the little girl and it’s like a fun role reversal. He starts at the beginning sort of saving her and then she’s saving him and it’s fun. I think it makes for an interesting story.
DC: The Domestics has some really strong performances. Can you tell me about the casting process and why you chose Kate Bosworth, Tyler Hoechlin, and Lance Reddick for their roles?
MN: I wasn’t able to actually meet Kate in person when I cast her, but I talked with a few different actresses and I talked with Kate. We hit it off and I remember there was this one point where we were talking and she just sort of stopped and started looking at me. I was like, “Is everything okay?” And she said, “No, no, no. I’m looking at your shirt.” I had all these different guns on my shirt. An artist had made this shirt with all these different kinds of weapons on it and she said, “I’m looking at your shirt. I’m looking to see if my Henry rifle is on there.” I said, “You’ve got to be kidding me. Oh my gosh, you get it.” She goes, “Oh no, I love this stuff. I live for this stuff. This is the kind of movie I want to be in.” She understood the character. It was obvious that she was right when we were talking about the movie and it was that little detail that to me put her right over the edge.
Tyler on the other hand, he really understood that this was Kate’s movie. Really, it’s Kate’s story and her growing. So it was finding an actor who was willing to give that up to her. It was crazy. This was pre-Weinstein, so we were dealing with a bunch of stuff. Tyler was so clear about that. He said, “I totally get it.” Really Tyler is the one who is trying to win her back, so he has a huge part. He’s almost equal, but she just comes through at the end with a stronger heart and he was really cool with that. He brought such a strong vibe to his male character, but also this vulnerability. The moment I like the best with him is when he crawls into bed with her at that crash house. He looks over at her and she doesn’t look at him and he wants to say something. He wants to touch her, but he can’t and she says, “Goodnight Mark.” Him being able to stab bad guys in the head with a knife and then be very broken and vulnerable, I think really stood out and ultimately made him a much more interesting character.
As far as Lance Reddick, I mean come on. It’s Lance Reddick. It was the opportunity, not only to work with him, but to give him a character that wasn’t so stoic, because Nathan is sort of a jovial guy. He’s always joking. He’s happy. He’s always smiling. What movie have you seen where Lance Reddick smiles? I mean, come on! (laughs) When we were making this movie, he was grinning and he was laughing and he was having a good time. So for me, it was getting to see that side of him and then watching him turn from such a wonderful dinner host to there’s this darkness behind him. He’s not a bad man. He just has a different viewpoint than Mark and Nina. That doesn’t make him a bad man in this world. To have that kind of rounded out character for him is exciting. To see him pull that off is so much fun.
DC: I think The Domestics causes the viewer to question whether or not people are inherently good or bad. Do you think people would turn on each other in the same situation or do you think people would work together?
MN: Honestly, I think both. It’s why in the movie I have Mark and Nina meet up with Nathan. Yes, they have a little bit of a spat in the movie, where it’s life or death in that moment. Like I said, I think both Mark and Nina are ultimately good people with slightly different viewpoints, but they’re not gang members. Ultimately, Mark saves Nathan and his son’s life. So Nathan invites them over for dinner and wants to sort of live normally again for once. So I think that there is some of that in the movie. I mean obviously we draw attention to the people who wouldn’t do that and those are the gangs. You have the Nailers, who were guys like the guy with spiked helmet. He’s this guy in a suit and he was probably a pretty normal guy in the real world, but then when this opportunity came he was like, “Yeah, I’ve always wanted to kill some people. Well now I can do it.” So I also think there’s that side to it. That side of I can do this now and I can be who I really want to be. We focus on that in the movie, because yeah it’s scary and it’s intense and brings about some great, exciting stuff and ultimately helps Mark and Nina on their journey.
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